


The Winchesters Three

by Sharrakor



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adam Milligan is More of a Winchester Than is Healthy, Angst, Gen, Hallucinations, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Torture, The Winchester Curse, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-04-30 00:44:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5144075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharrakor/pseuds/Sharrakor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>In some hypothetical future, the youngest Winchester returned to the world and his brothers. Joyous though Sam and Dean were, they quickly realized that he had not returned whole. The Winchester curse continued to afflict the innocent.</i>
</p><p>This story has been cross-posted onto FanFiction.Net.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Tags (particularly character tags) will be updated as the story goes along.  
> There will be a few surprise character returns.

“I’m fine, Sam,” the young man intoned from his position on the floor, his lanky limbs tangled in the bedsheets.

“That’s not what it looks like from here.” Sam stood, leaning against the frame of the door, a suppressed grin playing on his lips. Adam simply huffed into the quilt, working himself out of the entangling mess. Sam’s grin gave way to a creased brow. “Having nightmares again?”

Adam didn’t reply, scowling at his quilt. The stupid thing wasn’t cooperating and he needed a barrier between Sam’s prying and himself. Pronto. Silence, no matter the thickness, never deterred him and Adam could only put up with so much.

“Adam?”

The young man looked up, angry. “Of course I’m having nightmares!” he snapped, tossing bedsheets off the floor and onto the bed. “When aren’t I having nightmares!?”

Sam blanched. “Look, Adam-”

“Cram it, Sam,” he said, holding back on as much venom as he could. He clambered back into bed, deliberately keeping Sam and that stupid hurt look he had to be harboring by now out of sight. “I just need sleep,” he said with finality as he dropped into his pillows. Sam must’ve finally got the message for seconds later his door closed with a soft click.

With the air and room finally clear of the overbearing presence, Adam finally paid attention to the tension that was compressing his body; his every muscle taut and at attention, ready to fling him out of the room and to the nearest safe area.

Except, it’d never find one. There wasn’t a single safe space in the world (or beyond) when your own mind was tearing itself apart with fear and horror. Not even sleep was a reprieve. His nightmares were proof of that - and the one that had seen him end up on the floor had been a doozy. At least he hadn’t ended up screaming for Dean or Sam again. That always was too much to bear.

The dream was difficult to piece back together but he remembered enough to make him shiver. His mother - no, the monster that had worn her face - had chased him through his old house, the one he had left behind in Windom. Almost caught him, too, if he hadn’t dodged out of the way in his dream and onto the floor in reality.

It wasn’t the first time he had dreamt this. There were only so many things in his crap life that could be used against him. And he had gone through each of them at least a dozen times each, before in the cage and now in his head. His only consolation was that they felt considerably less real than they had in the cage.

The ghouls were almost a staple for the horrors that swamped him at night. He’d had worse (of course he had); worse than even his mother eating him as he screamed for her to stop, and what was _WRONG_ with her and why was she doing this. And the inky blackness, the darkness that stuck to his skin and stained his vision. The smell of damp earth, the press of steel to his throat. The struggle to breathe … and then sudden comprehensive _nothing_.

Yeah, he had had worse than that. He struggled to remember the details (not that he was in any particular rush to and, hell, maybe he should quit now and not tempt fate with this train of thought) but he was well aware of the days and years he had spent dreaming for a way out. Any way to end it all.

No such reprieve in Hell, though.

At least, not until he had woke up almost a fortnight prior, sprawled on a couch with his half-brothers and their angel pal staring at him. History liked to repeat itself, Adam had thought at the time. Well, he might’ve in between his mind melting into a puddle of panic and cortisol. They had saved him, though, and for that maybe he should be more grateful towards Sam and Dean…

But no. Fuck that. It was their fault he had been downstairs for as long as he had. A raw rage began to boil at the bottom of his stomach that quickly turned to queasiness. He swallowed twice, pushing down any urge to expel the minimal contents of his stomach over the floor.

A knock at the door shocked him into releasing the slightest of eeps and he immediately bit down on his lip. Goddammit. That _had_ to be Sam again. Couldn’t he just leave him alone for a few more years? He rolled further into his pillows and willed Sam to go away. Another knock proved that Adam still hadn’t developed the ability to control reality (he should look into that, maybe).

He rolled out of bed and trudged to the door, heavy sighs lining the way. If it was Sam - and god help him if it was - he was definitely going to have to make sure that he got the picture that he really does not need Sam to check on him every quarter of an hour or even ever. It was suffocating.

Adam wrinkled his nose when he was within a couple of feet of the door, the acrid scent of rotten eggs assaulting his nostrils. God, Sam better not have farted outside the door or it’d be another thing to shout at him over. He swung the door open, a rant on his lips for whomever was unfortunate enough to be on the other side. It never left, and with a blast of hot, dry air, it instead lodged itself in his throat.

Hell sprawled out in front of him, vast and infinite and terrible. The screams and wails of the damned punctured him, the smell of sulfur stronger as the dry wind brought it in. And standing on the threshold with crossed arms and an expectant look was… Sam? A flicker of the older brother’s brown eyes to a piercing, luminous blue quickly dispelled that idea.

It was Lucifer himself.

Lucifer smiled, the act twisting Sam’s face into something horrible. “Hello Adam. I wondered where you had disappeared to.”

A fire exploded to life on the bookcase that had sat on the wall to the right of the door and Adam flinched, recoiling in horror. The old, dusty tomes that had been haphazardly stacked on it proved to be excellent kindling and it roiled, red and black and entirely unholy. Fissures and cracks formed their way up and down the walls and across the roof, sections falling out and exposing the tiny room to the hellish landscape.

 _No_ , Adam screamed internally, mouthing it as he backed further away. He couldn't be here! He had escaped! His brothers had finally saved him! He had been _safe_! A chorus of screams and wails, the sounds of the tortured souls of hell, tore all that away from him.

“Dean!” he shouted despite himself. Another crack snaked its way up the wall behind the young Winchester, plaster and wood crumbling out of the gap. The sudden breeze against the back of his neck startled Adam, and he tripped as he twisted to defend himself against it.

“Wow. Graceful as ever,” the devil said, chuckling and giving Adam a slow clap. “C’mon Adam. I think playtime is over. I may be billions of years old, but I’m very impatient.” He clicked his fingers and made a grasping motion at Adam, who immediately stood, limbs stretched out almost painfully. Adam’s eyes bulged as he lost all control over his movement.

He was fully within Lucifer’s control and there was nothing he could do about it.

The archangel kept one hand in a clenched fist and, with the other, gestured lazily at the walls and furniture, all of which blew outwards into the distance, leaving only the ground remaining. With another gesture, a slab of stone rose from the ground, intricate patterns carved along its sides and stained in blood. He gave Adam a predatory smirk.

“It's been so long since we had fun together,” the archangel drawled. “I hope you haven't been purposely avoiding me.” He looked sharply at Adam, all dark humor instantly vanishing, “You haven't been, have you?”

Adam choked on his words, all air caught in his constricting windpipe. He clawed uselessly at his throat, trying desperately to stop whatever was strangling him with a vengeance. Another gasp as he struggled to scream for help, and just as soon as the fear of suffocation set in, it ended.

Lucifer flexed his hands, opening and closing them experimentally. Adam fell bodily to the ground, sucking down life-giving oxygen, coughing and sputtering as he did. The Morningstar looked at the choking youth, the closest thing to a sheepish expression as he was capable of.

“You'll have to forgive me - I sometimes don't know myself when I get angry.” The angel’s eyes twinkled darkly. “But there has to be consequences for doing that.”

With an immediate realization that he was able to move freely, Adam looked up at Lucifer and scrambled as fast as he could backwards on all fours. “Dean! Sam! Someone, help me!” he screamed as loud as he could.

This couldn’t be happening. He was free of the cage. Lucifer couldn’t be here. Sam had assured him that the archangel was still downstairs, locked in his cage, and he would never have to suffer the horror at his hand again.

Lucifer, with an exaggerated roll of his head, tsked. “Come on, Adam. You’re smarter than that! Nothing I could do to you would ever compare to what you do to yourself.”

“Dean, please!” Adam screamed again, body twitching and shivering in fear. Dean just needed to hear. Dean promised. He _said_ he'd get Adam out. _He said_.

“Like that. That right _there_. You really think your-" The devil paused to fake an awkward cough.  "-brothers would help you?” Lucifer laughed, high and cold. “The heat got hot and what do you know! They’re the ones who put you here. You know that. They don’t give a flying crap about you.”

Adam shook his head fervently, though he wasn't sure why. His mind was screaming, echoing with the truth of what Lucifer was saying. There was no escape from his eternal torment. His “brothers” had never cared. The cage was inescapable. The youth choked back a sob.

“Aww, there, there Adam,” Lucifer said with no sympathy. “You may have been forgotten and left for dead but let’s look at the silver lining - we get to play a favorite game of yours.” A flick of his wrist had Adam sprawled on top of the blood-stained stone slab. Barbed wrought iron chains animated and wrapped themselves tightly around the boy’s limbs, pinning him to its surface.

Despite himself, Adam screamed Dean's name one more time as the chains tightened around his arms, drawing blood from him. This time, he was answered with the slamming of a door. _His_ door. The door to his _room_. Everything swam painfully before him, his head throbbing violently as the entirety of Hell blurred together with the bunker as he knew it.

Inwards looked Dean, holding a pistol in one hand and a gleaming silver knife in the other, and Sam, doing much the same. Adam saw the typical battle-ready expression of each of his brothers mixed with concern and… horror? They must've seen Lucifer, Adam decided.

The angel rolled his eyes. “C’mon Adam. You're going to bring them into this?” Adam ignored him and croaked out to his brothers, “Help me please.” He was shocked at how raw his throat was; he hadn’t thought he had shouted so loudly or for so long.

Beyond the devil, Sam's mouth fell open. “Oh my god,” he breathed, his hand gripping the pistol tightly.

Dean, on the other hand, acted quickly. To Adam’s surprise, Dean sheathed his knife, tucked the pistol in his belt and raced over. “Hold on, small fry. We'll get you off this,” he said, looking up and down the youngest Winchester’s bound form. He gave a sharp tug on Adam's arm. “Sam, help! He's not moving a damn muscle.”

With a start, Sam tucked away his weapons and came over to Adam's other side. He felt both of them tug downwards on his arms to no avail; he remained chained to the slab. “Maybe it's some kind of spell?” Sam asked Dean.

The eldest Winchester roughly patted down Adam and shook his head. “No hex bag. I'll check if it's another of those damned Men of Letters artifacts.”

Adam blinked up at the both of them and whispered “Lucifer.” His brothers exchanged a concerned glance before Dean turned away to rifle through the items on Adam’s bed.

As though speaking his name were a summoning ritual (which was highly possible), the archangel spoke up. “I'm really disappointed that you chose fantasy over little ol’ me. Play this silly game then. We'll just make up for time lost.” With a click of his fingers, the stone slab, the chains, the hellish landscape and Lucifer himself vanished.

Adam fell heavily on the ground, painfully tearing himself out of Sam's tight grip and startling both hunters. “Adam!” he exclaimed, kneeling beside the winded boy. “Are you okay?”

He saw the cringe in Sam's eyes as he must have realized the uselessness of his question. He knew that had it been any other day, a scathing quip was what Sam would've deserved. But he felt small and vulnerable and his arms stung fiercely. This was not the time and he instead simply shook his head, not trusting himself to speak coherently.

“No small surprises there,” Dean said, moving closer. “Help me lift him up.” Wordlessly, the two Winchesters hoisted up the third brother onto his bed. Blood dripped from Adam’s forearms, leaving a stuttering trail behind.

“I'll grab the medical supplies,” Sam said once Adam was safely on the bed and bolted out the room. Dean nodded belatedly, turning to grab a t-shirt off the floor. It was a favorite of Adam's, something that he had actually attached himself to after… waking up on his brothers’ couch. He watched as Dean proceeded to tear it into strips and, had he had the energy, he knew he'd be tearing Dean a new one. Instead, he just watched with a sad expression.

The eldest Winchester inspected his work and, seemingly satisfied, crouched down in front of Adam's bed. “You scared the crap out of us, runt.” When Adam made no reply nor gave the slightest indication that he had heard, Dean snapped his fingers in the youth’s face. “Hey. You still in there, Adam?”

Adam swallowed down the lump in his throat. “Yeah,” he said simply. Dean nodded and held up one of Adam's arms, glancing over it. With a frown of disapproval, he began to wind one of the cloth strips around his arm, presumably to act as a temporary tourniquet until Sam arrived with the proper medical equipment.

Adam watched Dean's work silently, breaking only to say, “Not tight enough” when he prepared to tie it up. Dean paused to look at him. “Trust me,” Adam added quietly. In what could now be considered a past life, he had been studying to become a doctor and while that was almost ten centuries ago to him, he at least remembered a few details.

Dean just nodded and rewound the tourniquet. Adam winced with regret as pain radiated along his arm. “Sorry,” Dean said, “but it's what the doctor prescribed.” He smirked at his joke.

Adam barely heard him, resting his head back and concentrating solely on the here and now - wherever it was. The pain was helping him ground himself and it helped make reality feel that shade more real. Lucifer’s words continued to scream out in his head so without so much as a glance in Dean's direction, Adam asked quietly, “Did you really save me?”

The eldest Winchester stiffened and Adam shifted just in time to catch a glimpse of his conflicted expression. “Of course we did,” he replied, eyes now guarded and face blank. “You’re family, Adam. My brother. I’d’ve done the same for Sam. Hell - I _did_ the same for Sam. There's not a goddamn thing I wouldn't do for either of you.”

Family. There was that word again. The Winchesters loved to throw the word around but Adam couldn't help but feel that they had some drastically altered sense of the word. Sam frequently used it with him, as though he desperately needed to convince Adam (and himself) that it were true. It hadn’t worked. He knew they all shared a parent, a bloodline, but he didn't consider them family. His only true family was in heaven, where she deserved to be but where Adam wished she wasn't. His heart ached over her death - the first time it had done so since the first year of the cage. An innumerable amount of lifetimes separated him from the deal he had made with Zachariah.

He wondered if his mom remembered him.

Sam returned at that moment, a small lockbox held in both hands, and Dean moved to give him access to Adam's wounds. Adam hissed and recoiled violently as Sam washed out the wounds, preparing them for the dressing. Having learnt his lesson, Sam gripped Adam's wrists tightly as he applied the packing and gauze. He'd have never admitted it later but as Adam watched Sam through half-lidded eyes, he was vaguely impressed that Sam knew how to treat wounds properly.

After everything was properly sealed up, Sam packed away the remaining materials and stood up. “There. All done.”

“How’re ya holding up?” Dean asked from his sitting position near Adam's desk.

“Better. But tired,” Adam replied, clenching and unclenching his fists experimentally. No nerve or muscle damage. That was good.

Dean nodded, pushing up from the chair. “Don't scare us like that again, runt. Or I'll kick your butt instead.” Sam gave Dean a disparaging look and Adam bit down on the swell of anger at having it implied that he had any choice in this.

“Sure thing,” he said instead, voice dripping with sarcasm. “I'll get right on that.”

“What Dean's trying to say is that we're r-" Sam began.

“Yeah, yeah,” the youngest interjected. “You actually ‘care’. He's just doing that big brother thing. Whatever.” Adam shifted in his bed, careful not to knock his arms accidentally. “Look, I wanna get some shut eye. Would you mind?”

Sam gave him that puppy dog expression. “Alright, Adam. We'll let you get some sleep.” Without another word, the elder Winchesters filed out and Adam soon drifted off into all-encompassing dreamless darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's lately been a complete lack of Adam Milligan-centric genfics in the fandom and I figured this was a niche I could fill for those looking for one.
> 
> I have an expansive plot worked out for this fic and I endeavour to be updating regularly.
> 
> Please feel free to leave a review (if you're into that) or just a comment. That kind of thing keeps me going.


	2. Chapter 2

The following days passed by rather uneventfully and life grinded on in the bunker. Adam only suffered from a single nightmare in the time, and this one was almost normal compared to what he usually got - a fact that he found miraculous and hoped was a sign that he was getting better.

Sam had instead decided that it was a sign that he was getting worse and his Mother Hen persona entered overdrive. Even Dean had shown an uncharacteristic amount of overprotectiveness, at least for the first few days. It all ended pretty quickly when Adam had angrily told him he needed neither Sam nor Dean and they could just go back to not giving a damn.

That hadn’t been a good day.

Adam fortunately learnt that the Winchesters didn’t hold a severe grudge so other than a few terse conversations, the fight that he had with Dean was quickly forgotten. This suited Adam just fine; despite all his anger towards the brothers, he didn’t exactly want them to kick him out. He just needed a lot more space than he had been given. It wasn’t a lot to ask for, he thought. He had returned to Earth barely three weeks ago and he still had 800 years of Hell to deal with. He couldn’t do that while he was being suffocated, metaphorically.

He considered all this as he walked into the kitchen of the bunker one early morning. He knew Dean and Sam were already up, having heard the sounds of movement and talking and clinking china long before he even reached the kitchen. What he hadn’t expected was three plates sitting on the bench.

Dean was the first to notice Adam padding into the room, bare feet almost silent against the tiles. “You’re up. Great! Scrub that bucket of water idea, Sammy,” he said, smiling playfully. He chuckled and returned to the sizzling frying pan as Sam looked up from the folded newspaper.

“Mornin’ Adam,” Sam said with a smile.

“Mornin’,” Adam returned, not bothering to hold back on an incredulous look. The atmosphere was needlessly cheery for an otherwise ordinary morning. Not unless they knew something he didn’t, he supposed. Maybe they had finally found somewhere to leave him behind, a small part of him thought dryly.

“Hope you’re feeling up for some grub,” Dean said, waving a grease-coated spatula at Adam, who nodded needlessly as his stomach announced how empty it was to the whole room. “Good. We need to get some muscle onto ya. You’re all skin and bones.”

“Jeez, I wonder why that is,” Adam drawled, approaching the bench. The smell of cooking bacon was overwhelmingly enticing and he cursed his stomach for selling him out. He was entirely fine with eating… well, whatever he had been eating since he woke here. He scratched his nose; he remembered plain rice and bread but not much more than that. Perhaps that was why he was starving.

Dean continued cooking as though he hadn’t heard a word Adam had spoken which, given how thoroughly into it he was, was pretty likely. Sam had already returned to reading through the newspaper but Adam, for the life of himself, couldn’t figure out why the second eldest would bother reading it. All the important news had to be available on the internet. As though he possessed a supernatural awareness, Sam folded the newspaper in half and slid a chair out from the table with foot. He nodded at the chair, shaggy hair falling into his face. “C’mere, Adam.”

Adam shuffled over and landed in the chair heavily. “What?” he asked, disinterestedly.

“I saw you eyeing this,” Sam said, waving the newspaper. “Figured you were wondering what I was doing. I don’t read it for the celebrity news-” Dean snorted from the kitchen and Adam smirked. “Shut up, jerk. Anyway, small local newspapers like this one are useful ‘cause you’ll often find small odd stories that are overlooked by bigger media outlets. They’re usually the ones that we have to deal with.”

“Right. And anything in there today?” Adam asked, betraying the disinterest he was trying to feign.

Sam shook his head, “Nothing in this one. I’ve got a few more to look through, though.”

“Great. Sounds like a real fun fest.”

Sam sighed and folded the newspaper closed, tossing it into the bin. “You can give me a hand with the other ones, if you didn’t have any other plans.”

Adam shrugged. “Was just gonna catch up on all the television I missed thanks to… I never finished Scrubs.” Dean chuckled from the kitchen and though he felt an urge to ask what was funny, Adam found easier to ignore him.

“Well, you can do that still. Figured you’d like to have something else to do,” Sam said, grabbing a newspaper from the pile on the floor.

“What d’you even need me to do?”

“Just circle or point out anything you think is out of the ordinary. Any unexplained deaths, any mysterious sudden disappearances. Unusual weather patterns. Stuff like that.”

“Right,” Adam said, mulling it over. Spending time with Sam wasn’t high on his list of things to do and doing so ran the risk of Sam Mother Hen-ing him. But there was all the possibility that Sam would be too involved in locating odd news to even think about smothering Adam. Hell, he could just do it while eating and leave if it all went south. “Pass me one,” he said with a shrug.

Sam blinked. “Really? Alright.” He fished one out of the pile and passed it over to Adam. This one was entitled the _Belleville Telescope_ and was smaller than most newspapers he had seen at twelve pages long. That fortunately made it easier to locate the deaths section, which Adam quickly read. Nothing exceptionally out of the ordinary. One elderly man passed away due to surgical complications and another peacefully in his sleep. A guy in his twenties was involved in a hit and run but that was commonplace enough to not strike Adam as supernatural.

He glanced up at Sam and wondered how he took so long to get through a single newspaper. He cleared his throat, “Nothing in this one.” Adam folded up the paper and dropped it unceremoniously on the table.

Sam gave Adam an incredulous look, “You checked the entire paper in that time?”

“No. Just the deaths section.”

“You need to check the whole paper. Leads don’t always turn up in the deaths section,” Sam explained, turning the page of his paper. He folded this page into quarters and turned it to show Adam. “See, here?” he asked, pointing at a snippet on the weather page. “This article talks about unseasonal thunderstorms for this time of year. That’s usually a sign of demonic activity.”

Adam sighed, “I’ll check it again.” He picked the newspaper back up and started reading from the first page. It was dreary work. Articles about local farmers having issues with crop growth, articles about marriages, and an article about some elderly couple that had divorced after 56 years of marriage. The only thing that stood out to Adam was some flash flooding in the area that led to a lottery winner drowning. Adam asked Sam whether this was unusual enough.

“Could be worth having a look into. Mark it down,” Sam replied. Adam circled the article as his stomach grumbled loudly. The young man looked up, searching for a clue on breakfast’s status and he was greeted with a wonderful sight. Dean was already in the process of dishing up the food.

The eldest Winchester chuckled, “Yeah, I heard ya from over here, runt. Hope you’re not like Moose over here who eats only rabbit food.”

“Nah. I’ve been told that I have the same taste in food as you,” Adam said, sitting up at the table.

“Do ya? Who told you that?”

“Zachariah,” Adam replied sourly. Mentioning that dick of an angel always left a sour taste in his mouth. He pushed it from his mind to prevent spoiling his appetite.

“Well, he can’t have been wrong the entire time,” Dean offered, grabbing two plates off the bench. One was obviously for Sam, piled high with some kind of scrambled egg and garnished with asparagus. The other was more bacon and eggs and hash browns than Adam could ever remember seeing. The plates had barely touched down on the table before the young man dug in.

Sam and Dean laughed as they watched their younger brother scoff down the food with haste. He stopped to swallow, which was quickly followed by a loud belch.

“Jesus, Adam,” Sam said with a look of disgust. “I didn’t realize you were a carbon copy of Dean.”

“Hey!” Dean and Adam interjected. “Don’t say that like it’s a bad thing,” Dean added, dishing up his own breakfast.

“I didn’t say it was a bad thing,” Sam began.

“Oh, please.”

Adam rolled his eyes, letting their bickering become a background droning as he returned to his breakfast. His stomach growled, convulsing as it was want to do when filling it up from empty and he pushed back at the wave of nausea. He had to stop starving himself, he decided. Even if it brought the threat of vomiting along with it, he needed the sustenance. Dean took up the seat to Adam’s right and soon enough the room was filled with the sound of utensils scraping against china.

The din was only broken by the sound of Dean’s phone vibrating loudly. He took a moment to quickly swallow down his half-chewed mouthful before answering. “Hey, Cas. What’s up?” Adam watched Sam give Dean an inscrutable look, which the eldest returned with an equally unreadable look of his own. _This is just great_ , he thought. _They’ve got their own form of eye communication_. He wondered how much time someone would need to spend with another person to perfect silent communication. Probably a lot, he hazard to guess.

“You’re at- Oh. Sit tight. I’ll be right there,” Dean said and ended the call. “He’s at the door,” he explained, meeting Sam’s quizzical look. “Sounds like something’s shaking in the supernatural world.” Without waiting for a response, Dean pushed his plate in and stood up.

“Do you think it’s more angel stuff?” Sam asked, looking up at Dean but all he got was a "I hope not" and then he was gone.

Adam frowned. He knew that the Winchesters and Castiel were close but he couldn’t help but have his skin crawl when he thought about the angel - or any angel for that matter. He didn’t have the best experience with them and he was sure that Castiel regarded him cautiously since he arrived in the bunker. When he had asked why, Sam had explained how Adam attacked him in delirium when they first recovered Adam from the pit. He had supposed that maybe Castiel would forgive the attempt but it instead felt like the angel was just waiting for him to snap again.

That certainly didn’t endear him towards Castiel. Hard enough to convince himself that he was keeping it together without being around people (or creatures) that thought otherwise.

Adam snatched a newspaper off the pile and opened it up. He needed the distraction from his running train of thought. Sam proved to be psychic again for the second eldest affixed Adam with a concerned look and asked if he was feeling okay.

“Yeah, just peachy,” Adam replied snappishly as he struggled to concentrate on the articles. The words flowed over him, meaningless symbols that held no information and he scowled in consternation as he redoubled his efforts to process the articles. It was almost wasted effort for in that moment, Dean walked back into the kitchen with Castiel following closely behind.

“Sam,” Castiel said in the gruff way he greeted people. “Adam.”

“Hey Cas,” Sam said cheerfully. “How’re things in heaven?”

“Not good,” he replied, watching Dean take a seat at the table. “But that's not why I'm here.”

“Alright, lay it on us, Cas,” Dean said from his reverse sitting position on the kitchen chair.

“There's been a few rumours circulating on angel radio.” Castiel gave the three brothers a severe look, one that chilled Adam to the bone. “Someone is looking for the rings of the horsemen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the plot begins, kids.
> 
> With the way Season 11 seems to be heading, though, this fic may quickly become obsolete. Even if it does though, I'll still continue this as a post-S11E05 AU.


	3. Chapter 3

Adam blinked, confused. This was the bad news? Someone was collecting _rings_? He looked at Sam, searching for similar confusion. Unfortunately, his expression matched the seriousness of Castiel’s voice and Dean’s expression was no different. He opened his mouth to ask what, exactly, was so concerning but Dean cut across him.

“Someone’s actually looking for… Y’don’t think-” he began, running a hand through his hair.

“I do,” the angel confirmed. “There has been a literal buzz amongst the ranks about it, but no one can actually pinpoint where it is coming from. It is likely that those who speak about such things wish to be hidden.”

“But why now? And how do they even know about the rings?”

Adam looked at all three participants of the conversation, hoping someone would bother to explain what the hell the rings were and why it was such a bad thing that someone was looking for them. He got no such explanation as the trio charged ahead.

“I don’t know how exactly they know, but I can hazard a guess as to why,” Cas replied and his eyes slowly slid along until they rested squarely on Adam himself. The boy blinked and he became immediately aware of how his heartbeat was drumming loudly in his ears. “Ever since reports circulated of Adam’s return to Earth, there have been whisperings of Michael’s whereabouts-” Adam shuddered at the mention of the archangel. “-and given that he has not yet returned to Heaven to seize leadership, this angel must be assuming he is still in the Cage.”

Adam stood up, chair scraping loudly against the tiled floor. His hands clenched tightly in a sudden bout of anger, the thrumming of Hell pounding in his ears. “Well, if you’re just going to speak like I’m not actually here, I’ll just show myself out.”

“Whoa, hey,” Dean said, “hold on there, Adam.” The eldest Winchester wore an expression of confusion and Adam cursed him for not getting it. “No one’s speaking as if you’re not here.”

“That’s not exactly how it felt sitting here,” Adam snapped, scowling. “I don’t have the slightest idea of what’s going on and not a goddamn one of you think I need to be kept in the loop.”

Dean exhaled irritably but Sam spoke instead. “Adam, we were going to explain what's going on just as soon as we knew.”

“Cut the crap. You weren't going to tell me a thing.”

This time, Sam was the one to sigh irritably. “Alright Adam. What do you want to know?”

Adam's scowl deepened as a small but persistent voice angrily lamented that they were being a little _too_ amicable and that this wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Despite the voice, the young man lowered himself back into the chair, still smoldering. “How about you start with the rings? Why's it such a bad thing that someone is looking for them?”

“The rings belong - _belonged_ to the Four Horsemen,” Sam began.

“The Four Horsemen? Of the Apocalypse?”

“Yep. Them.”

“Damn,” Adam said, taking in the information. He knew that the Apocalypse was a very real thing - and how could he not when he had been caught right in the middle of it - but it had somehow never occurred to him that all the other big players of the end times were also real. He had probably been a bit too busy with saying no… He shook his head, aborting the thought. “Did they have the horses too?”

“Nah, better than that,” Dean replied. Adam raised a questioning eyebrow which his brother quickly answered with a short chuckle. “Cars.”

Well, at least Hell was able to keep up with the advances of technology, Adam thought with some humor, but this wasn't the track of conversation he wanted to be on. He had to guess that the Horsemen’s choice of vehicle wasn't what the problem was about. “So, are the rings- are they supposed to summon the Horsemen or something? Restart the end? Is that what makes them such a problem?”

“Yes and no,” Sam answered slowly. Adam scowled at the vague answer which hurried Sam along. “It doesn't bring back the Horsemen but if you have all of them together, they can open up the cage.”

Adam swallowed hard and though he couldn't see it, he was sure what little color he had managed to regain over the last few weeks fled him for safety. “Open it?” he repeated lamely.

Dean nodded as Sam continued. “Yep and if, uh, the occupants get out, all this will be quickly over.”

“And that is why we must check on the rings,” Castiel said abruptly. “We can't let Michael and Lucifer back out of the cage.”

Adam flinched violently at the mention of the archangels and a cold trickle fled down his spine. So this was what the problem was. No small wonder then why Sam and Dean had looked so horrified at the suggestion someone was trying to find them. He was sure he wore the same expression, now that he knew what was at stake.

It couldn’t happen though. He had just left. He didn’t- He couldn’t go through it all again on Earth. He couldn’t. _He couldn’t._

“Adam?” Sam said quietly to his left, breaking the young man out of his reverie. “Hey, are you okay?”

He slowly turned to look at Sam, who wore that concerned expression he was now used to. He nodded, avoiding direct eye contact with the Winchester. He couldn’t deal with the scrutinizing right now. Fortunately, Sam appeared to understand and he brought the conversation back on topic. “I agree, Cas, but those wards we placed on the rings, wouldn’t they be enough to keep anyone taking them?”

“Possibly,” the angel replied, “but most of those wards were made to protect against demons taking them. We thought only Crowley would know about the rings. It would not take long for an angel to circumvent them. If the rings are still there, I can add more angelic warding.”

“It’s gonna take forever to get to each place,” Dean said, frowning. “We’d have t’ take a ring each then meet back up at the last one.”

Castiel shook his head. “You’re not wrong, Dean - it would take far too long and we cannot afford to do this slowly. We can’t let this angel find them first.”

“So, how do you think we should do this?” Sam asked.

“It will be quickest if I were to fly the both of you to each location.”

And there it was again. Everyone was preparing to leave him behind again. They were all so very quick to forget his existence but he would allow them to this time. He needed to see this through with them. He needed to know it was done.

“I’m coming with you,” Adam said, abruptly cutting off Dean who had been part way through admonishing Castiel for something that Adam had not heard. He felt all three pairs of eyes rest heavily on him. “I'm not being left here on my own.”

“Adam…” Sam began, moving a bang of hair that had slid into his face out of the way. “I don't think that's a good idea. You're still recovering.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Adam said, scowling.

“You might be feeling fine but the nightmares still haven’t completely gone away.”

Adam made sure to give Sam his most scornful glare. “Yeah, I somehow don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” he replied, laying on the sarcasm thickly. “Unless you think I’m going to fall asleep while walking around.”

The second eldest gave Dean an imploring look but he merely shrugged. “The kid’s got a point.”

Sam huffed in annoyance. “This is a terrible idea,” he said, leaning back in his chair and giving a challenging stare. Adam met it openly but said nothing in return. “Cas, what do you think?” he asked, gesturing to the angel in question.

Adam sat back in his chair. He hadn’t expected the angel to be brought into this but, on reflection, it should’ve occurred to him sooner. The angel was the one that was going to zap them to wherever they needed to go to and that gave him ultimate say in this. Given the distance that Castiel had been keeping between the two of them, this would be it. There’s no way the angel would yes.

But he wasn’t going to be left out of the loop. He’d ask Dean and try to figure something out. They could split up, just as Dean said. Sure, he no longer knew how to drive himself, but he could go with one of them. Or failing that, maybe there was some kind of spell that would let him watch what was happening. He was sure he had overheard Dean speaking to Sam about magic at some point, though nothing had been mentioned about remote viewing. That didn't make it impossible.

So focused on the internal dilemma was he, Adam almost missed Castiel’s response. “- Adam. I think he should come,” the angel said, and both Sam and Adam did a double-take.

Sam was the quickest to recover and he did so with an irritated noise. “Why do you think it’s a good idea? He needs to stay somewhere safe because we don't have any idea what is going on here and less an idea of what kind of effect-”

“Whoa there, Sammy - since when did you start taking Dad's side on protecting him? Last time we talked about this, you were pretty damn gun-ho for slapping a gun into the kid’s hand and placing him on the frontlines,” Dean said, interrupting Sam.

“When did you _stop_ taking Dad’s side?”

Dean’s face became a grim mask. “We've done this twice before Sam and we screwed it up both times. We can't keep the kid under lock and key. It jus’ doesn't work. Dad wanted to protect him and so do I but this isn't the way to do it.”

“Putting him out in the open isn't the better solution here-”

“I don't give a rat's ass what Dad wanted,” Adam interjected angrily.

“Maybe you don't,” Sam said, facing Adam. “But can you at least hear _me_ out? I've _been_ through what you're going through. I got out of that cage but I wasn't whole and that- I was messed up for a long time. It may seem like you're fine now, but if you scratch that itch, what then?”

Adam couldn't quite place his finger on why, but he was almost certain that the last part of Sam's speech wasn't even directed at Adam himself. That wasn't going to stop him from asking Sam what the hell he meant by ‘itch’, though.

No, instead, Castiel was going to stop him.

“Enough,” Castiel commanded, his voice cutting through the tension in the air and Adam could feel the force behind his words. “This bickering is pointless. Every second we waste is a second gained by whoever wants to restart the end times.”

“Well, I'm ready to go,” Adam said indignantly, crossing his arms and giving Sam a triumphant look. The second eldest merely shook his head, shaggy hair flying about, and Adam took that as a sign of disapproval.

He tried not to care one bit.

“If you're going to come, you’re going to need to actually get dressed,” Sam said with an eye roll. Adam looked down his pajama-clad form to his bare feet and it occurred to him that maybe he had misunderstood the head shaking.

“Yeah, I suppose I should,” Adam replied, sheepishly rubbing his shoulder.

Sam shook his head. “Would there be any point in creating done hex bags?” he asked, looking at Castiel.

The angel frowned in consideration. “I'm not sure. It might be able to protect from divining but no witchcraft could stop an angel of the Lord. Even one who has fallen so far to endanger all of Earth.”

“We've just gotta assume that this jerk hasn't found them all yet. Those are the ones we can protect those,” he replied.

“Sounds good, Sammy,” Dean said, standing up to swing his chair back in its spot at the table. “I'll grab us some weapons.”

Sam pushed out from the table, rattling the cutlery and plates of the breakfast they had long forgotten, and Adam followed his lead tentatively.

“We'll meet back here,” Dean added as everyone began moving out of the kitchen.

“Do not delay either. We can't afford to lose more time,” Castiel reiterated as Adam entered the silent hallway.

It was a quiet and uneventful walk back to his room that, other than the noticeable-only-when-you-concentrate background hum of the bunker’s generator, he made entirely on his lonesome. Although he took every chance to avoid the suffocating atmosphere the Winchesters radiated when he was around, he was anxious to leave for the rings before doubt began to set in and struck him paralyzed.

He really hoped he hadn’t thrown himself in the deep end here. Tangling with angels was at the bottom of his list of favorable experiences and he was probably walking directly into that. Adam was sure that Dean and Sam would say they’d protect him from whoever they were up against but past experience had taught him not to rely on that. He’d have to figure out some other way to protect himself from an angel.

The door to his room creaked loudly on its hinges and he made a mental note to apply some WD-40 to it when they came back. He looked at the piles of clothing that were scattered around his room with something akin to regret. There had once been a time when he wouldn’t have been able to go more than a day without tidying up his room. His mom had always appreciated that. It had made her life easier.

Now it was just the chore it had always been without the motivation he had benefitted from. It was easier to just watch television and forget that the outside world existed. He didn’t have to deal with surfacing memories that way, which had been happening more often since his last big nightmare. They now had this way of sliding in on his wandering train of thought without any kind of trigger. The only defense he had found, and it was a pretty imperfect one, was concentrating on something entirely engrossing.

He picked out a heavily creased shirt from one pile and fished out some jeans from another. He hadn’t bothered to tell either Sam or Dean about the surfacing memories. It wasn’t their problem even though they helped cause it. He couldn’t even feel guilty right now about saying nothing; he didn’t need any special power to know that he wouldn’t have ever been able to leave the bunker again if the Winchesters knew about the memories.

Now that he was completely dressed, he searched his room for a pair of shoes. He knew that they were around here somewhere; he had used them exactly once since waking in the bunker and he hadn’t actually left the room with them. He had… used them to defend himself but he couldn’t quite remember from what. The memory was hazy.

It didn’t matter anyway. He found his pair of boots, scuffed and worn, holding open his wardrobe door and he picked them up. As he stood back up, he looked at himself on the mirror that was hanging off the back of the wardrobe’s door. He couldn’t actually remember the last time he took a long look at himself since arriving at the bunker. He never bothered to do it when he was in the bathroom and he barely bothered to actually shower himself to give him the opportunity to accidentally look at the bathroom mirror.

He choked back a wave of emotions as he looked into the face in the mirror. It was definitely _him_ , but the last time he had even looked at himself was when he was nineteen. He was not that person anymore. He hadn’t even know that aging had been possible down there but the man who stared back at him was at least in his mid-twenties. There were dark rings under his eyes that he was certain had never been there before all the nightmares and intermittent sleep-onset insomnia.

His skin was of a deathly pallor and, if he hadn’t known any better, he’d never have guessed that he had ever had a managed to get a nice tan in his sophomore years to impress that chick Christine. Or had it been Christina? Dammit, he couldn’t even remember that. What would she even say if she were to see him now? Probably nothing good.

He wondered if he would find a picture of himself under the origin for the expression ‘looks like hell’ and a small, weak chuckle passed through him at his stupid joke; a chuckle that was stripped of actual amusement and probably sounded like a dry sob to anyone else. He slammed the wardrobe door closed, hiding the awful mirror away and walked over to land heavily on his bed. He pulled on a pair of socks that he made from whatever was closest to his bed and didn’t even bother to check if they were a matching pair before sliding on his boots and hurriedly lacing them up.

Glancing around the room, Adam wondered what he should actually bring with him, and other than a jacket which he snatched from its resting spot on the back of his desk chair, he couldn’t think of a single thing that he actually owned that would be worth bringing. He’d have brought a phone with him but in between all the bouts of sleeplessness and nightmares, it had never occurred to him to actually ask for one. It wasn't like he had anyone to call, in any case, and he definitely doubted anyone would bother calling him.

Everyone had likely forgotten he existed.

He slipped on the jacket on his way out the door and looked down both ends of the corridor, skin prickling suddenly. He strained to hear but could only pick up that background hum of the bunker. There was no other noise but he wasn’t actually sure what he should be picking up on. He swallowed hard, drew his jacket tighter and began the walk back to the kitchen warily. Being on high alert tended to make everything seem to go on forever and he felt every second of the walk back.

His boots echoed noisily on the concrete floor and he wished they wouldn’t but the tight confines of the corridor demanded it. He ran his hand along the wall as he walked, feeling the grooves and texture of the wall. There was a bump from somewhere behind him and he quickly checked over his shoulder. Nothing there. He grasped the chain on the wall, briefly comforted by the coldness of the iron before, with a start, the young man realized that it somehow felt very familiar - yet not because he had seen it here in the bunker.

He slowly turned to look at the chain, afraid of what he was going to find. The object of his horror snaked along the wall and around the corner, out of sight, but it was the exact same burnt metal that haunted him and that reeked of Hell. He let go of it quickly, jerking his hand away like he expected an electric current to run through it, and he could feel the malevolence radiating from it.

Chains rattled behind the young man and he jumped in surprise, turning part way as he landed. His eyes widened in horror; the corridor behind him was sealed by chains that pierced the walls and held on tightly with meat hooks. They crisscrossed in a misshapen net and swayed in a breeze that Adam couldn’t feel. He stood, paralyzed, and watched the corridor darken, creaking and snapping as it did. The walls stretched out and split, letting an orange-red glow wash over everything.

Then the wailing began.

That was more than enough for Adam, who turned and bolted away from the encroaching hell. His every footfall slapped down noisily on the floor and he could feel the seconds hemorrhaging away as the hellscape followed him, thrumming horribly in his head with predatory amusement. He urged himself on and sprinted around the corner, skidding wildly as he turned.

A few feet later and the thrumming died suddenly. Adam let his momentum carry him a few feet more before stopping completely and a cursory glance over his shoulder showed that nothing was following him. The chains were no longer there. He panted heavily, his lungs burning in his chest and it took a minute for him to fully compose himself.

“Goddammit - not now,” he swore at the ground through a few more gulps of air. “Just not now.” He stood back up and watched the corner expectantly, challenging it. Nothing happened and, satisfied that it wasn’t going to come back, he completed his walk back to the kitchen. He only hoped that no one had heard his mad run down the halls.

Adam returned to the kitchen to find Castiel and Dean already waiting. The eldest Winchester was lounging against one of the walls and the angel was seated at the table. They both wore a serious expression but neither elaborated, even as they looked up in greeting. He frowned, eyes searching the pair and hoping, praying that they hadn’t heard him and hadn’t changed their minds about letting him come.

When nothing was said, he crossed the room and took a seat at the table. It had since been cleared of all food and on it sat a large olive green duffle bag with a silver handle sticking out from the open zip. He didn't need much of an imagination to presume it was some kind of weapon but it didn’t look like any gun he had ever seen before. It was too cylindrical.

“Anything new on angel radio?” Dean asked, breaking the silence and Adam turned his attention away from the duffel and to the Winchester.

Castiel shook his head. “Nothing relating to our enemy but I hadn't expected much.”

“Still no clue on how this dick even knows about the rings?”

“I have given it some thought. It seems most likely that either Crowley or one his court has let slip the existence of the rings and their purpose,” the angel replied.

Dean shook his head, “I was thinking the same thing. It better friggin’ not be Crowley or this will be his last mistake.”

“I would hope so. He’s an opportunistic but manageable cretin. If he’s dared to even think about restarting the apocalypse… if you don’t do it, I will.” Castiel frowned, “But there is one other possibility and it concerns me more.”

“What's that?”

“It may be that Crowley and his demons have nothing to do with this. Gabriel was the one who told us about the rings to begin with and so it's not impossible that an angel old enough would know about the rings.”

“So, some winged dick has got this great idea all on his own?” Dean asked. “That’s friggin’ terrific.”

“It is just an idea. There weren’t many angels left from that time, but between the in-fighting and the Closing of Heaven, no one can accurately be accounted for,” Castiel replied.

“Here’s hoping we find out soon enough. It’d jus’ be easier if we could gank the bastard and call it a day.”

“I would hope we can persuade this angel to reconsider his path before it comes to that.”

Dean shrugged as Sam walked back in with four small cloth bags held in one of his huge hands.

“We're low on anti-scrying bags Dean,” Sam said as he poured them into a pocket of the duffel. “Not even sure how we can restock. The Men of Letters didn't leave any instructions for this one.”

“Keepers of knowledge, my ass,” Dean said, scoffing. Sam gave his brother a dirty look and Adam was sure that Sam’s next words would be ‘bitch please’ but he instead said nothing.

“So how’re we gonna do this?” Dean asked, pushing off from the wall.

“If you are all able to grab onto me, that should be enough of a connection for me to carry all of you,” the angel replied.

With a nod, the eldest Winchester grabbed the duffel bag from the table and approached the angel. Gripping the sleeve of Castiel’s overcoat, he glanced at the remaining two and with a quick jerk of his head, asked, “Ya coming?”

The two remaining Winchesters moved to grab a handful of trench coat and Adam looked at the angel with a mixture of expectation and apprehension.

“What happens-” he began to ask, the words sticking to his throat as his senses were suddenly assaulted with a sickening lurching feeling, like the ground disappeared from underneath, and his vision was treated to the sudden blinding glare of sunlight reflected off many windows and polished surfaces.

Adam stuck out his hand, shielding his eyes from the light, but as his stomach somersaulted and barrel-rolled, his hand quickly became a measure of defense as he pressed it firmly against his mouth.

He pushed down on any urge to empty his stomach onto the ground, doubling over as a precaution. He had lately become a little too accustomed to vomiting but that at least granted him the slight advantage of experience in pushing away the feeling.

His efforts were almost undone when a solid hand slapped down on his shoulder and bile lapped at the base of his esophagus. He looked up to find Dean standing at his side and he gave the man a grim kind of smile before returning to choking down the feeling.

He spent a moment composing himself and stood up straight as soon as he was sure that the feeling had passed. They were surrounded on all sides by multi-story buildings, most of them probably apartments judging by the fire escapes on each of them.

A tall white multi-windowed building sat to his right, with a very prominent neon sign that read “Castle Storage". Sam and Castiel had pulled away towards it and were clearly discussing something, though he couldn't hear exactly what given the distance and the hum of traffic that made up the background noise.

He turned to Dean, who asked, “You good?”

“I'm fine,” Adam replied shortly. “Where are we?”

The eldest Winchester stared at the tall building as he spoke. “This place is one of Dad's old lockups. He used it to store tools for hunting. Weapons and ammo and some dusty old tomes - the kind that Sammy would be into.

He also used it to store cursed items. The kind of thing you wouldn't want Grandma or ol’ Pete down the street getting their hands on it. The place is pretty damn secure.”

Adam nodded and hoped that this place was as secure as Dean was making it sound. It would be one less ring to worry about if the angel could never get to it.

Sam waved them over to the entrance where he and Castiel were waiting. Dean not-so-gently smacked Adam's shoulder and said, “C’mon, runt,” as he picked up the duffel bag and wandered over.

Adam followed him from behind, staying close but not close enough for Dean to notice Adam rubbing his shoulder. Last thing he needed was the Winchesters finding out he had been hurt by a slap. He'd never hear the end of it.

“I sense no other presence inside,” Castiel reported as soon as Dean and Adam were in earshot. “That may mean nothing if the enemy is masking himself from me. Be prepared for anything.”

Dean nodded, dropping the duffel to the ground and rummaging through it. He pulled out the silver-handled object Adam had spotted earlier and it turned out to be the weirdest knife he had ever seen. He wasn't actually sure it was a knife because he couldn't quite figure out how a triangular prism could have a proper bladed edge.

“Here,” Dean said and threw the blade, handle first, into Sam's waiting hand. The younger Winchester slid it into his belt as Dean grabbed an identical blade and holstered it on his belt as well. “D’ya reckon we need one of these?” he asked, looking at Sam. In his hand, he held the neck of some used beer bottle filled with a clear colorless liquid and with a slither of cloth hanging out of it.

_He watched it soar towards him, spinning over and over itself. It was the weirdest thing not being in complete control of your body yet being conscious enough to experience everything. It was like every sight, sound and smell was all rushing at him from a very great distance. The scale was all wrong. He was sure that Stull Cemetery wasn't leagues across and he was sure that the holy oil Molotov wasn’t meant to be smaller than a gnat. He wasn't sure how he knew all these things but he supposed that's what happened when you had an angel inside of you._

_He supposed that very briefly before the bottle made contact, shattering into flame and unleashing a torrent of fragments. He screamed in rage and pain though he actually felt none himself. His skin writhed and the outer layers briefly reached a plasmic state before carbonizing. The boy felt an alien, powerful rage for the upstart Castiel and though he wanted to atomize the wretch, the damage to his vessel - NO, MY NAME IS ADAM - was too much._

_He prayed for the sweet release of death to save him from his prison, but the sun that guided his every action was not done with him yet and everything - Stull Cemetery, Castiel, his dad's Impala, his_ brothers _\- drew away from him and faded to white._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope all my American readers had a good Thanksgiving and to all my other readers, I hope you had a good week in general.
> 
> I had fun writing this chapter, particularly the mirror scene and the flashback. I hope you had as much fun reading them, haha.


	4. Chapter 4

Adam coughed, deep and from the chest, as the surfacing memory constricted his lungs. He blinked several times, the sounds and sights from that fateful day lingering like ghostly echoes.

He was shocked by the memory of Stull Cemetery. Sure, he was used to forgotten memories popping up like weeds but they had always been after he fell in - never of his experience as a vessel. He shuddered as his mind replayed the last few seconds of the memory over and over and, when it became too much, he clamped down on it tightly. There was no way he was going to let himself spiral out. Not here.

It was with some embarrassment that he realized that the world had forged on without him and he rejoined the Winchesters and Castiel in the middle of a conversation. He hoped that this wasn't the time they realized something was up.

“-word yet on how it happened,” Castiel said as Adam caught on to the last section of his sentence. He wished he had heard what had happened but wishing that would be to wish he could control the flow of his suppressed memories and he might as well friggin’ wish for a miracle at that point.

“Well, it'd be a bit too coincidental if it wasn't our guy, wouldn't it?” Dean asked, hand gripping the dagger-thing tightly. Were they expecting an imminent attack?

“It would,” Castiel agreed. “But I don’t know why he would be in the European region. None of the rings are there.”

“He hopefully doesn't know that yet,” Sam added, shifting on his feet. “That might buy us some time.”

“We can hope.”

“Well, there's no point standing yapping about it,” Dean said. “C'mon. Let's check on this ring.” He turned and entered the storage building with Castiel and Sam following from behind. Adam watched them depart and a small part of him realized that he should be following them but it was a hell of a lot easier to just stand here.

Sam stopped halfway through the door and twisted to look straight at Adam. “Hey, are you okay?”

Adam stood up straight, drawing his shoulders together. “Yeah, I'm good,” he replied and he made himself believe it as he walked up to the door.

“Just making sure,” Sam said nodding. He held the door open and Adam was sure he wasn't going inside until Adam was in as well.

Adam sighed. “Look, Sam. I get that you were trying to protect me and I suppose I should be grateful but, honestly, I don't really need the protection.”

“You apologize just like Dean.”

“That wasn't an apology.”

Sam made a noise that was halfway between a laugh and a scoff. “You really are part of this family.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “Let's not do this again. We may be related by blood, but we're not family,” he replied flatly.

“With an attitude like that, you will be in no time.”

“Not until you break out that truckster,” Adam said sardonically.

Sam laughed; honest-to-goodness laughed without even the slightest trace of frustration or derision. “I'll let Dean know he still needs to get that. Now c'mon, before Dean and Cas get worried.”

Without a word, Adam did as suggested and he entered the building proper. No one bothered to greet them and he wasn't actually sure that this place was even staffed right now. The foyer area was lit by a series of fluorescent tubing that casted everything in a sickly off-white color and one of the lights in the far left corner flickered as if to punctuate a point that this place was running on a low budget. The door closed noisily as Sam followed him and from somewhere in the building Dean called out “Hey, Sam, is that you?”

“Yeah,” he called back. “Me and Adam.”

“Alright. Hurry your butts up then!”

Sam shrugged at Adam and waved him in the direction of Dean's voice. A short corridor brought the pair of them to a very old elevator, the kind that every movie had told him was popular for New York somewhere in the 1950’s. The black paint on the bars was peeling off in places, revealing the iron beneath the thin black veneer and the rust that had begun to take hold.

He found Dean and his angel friend waiting outside the door. Dean leant against one of the walls, clearly impatient as he twirled a set of keys around his finger. He immediately pushed off, catching the keys as he did, when Adam came around the corner with Sam closely behind. “There ya are,” he said. “About time. Let's get to this.”

Dean pulled the elevator door open and it screeched in protest, causing Adam to wince in discomfort. He hoped this wasn’t a sign of how run-down the place was, though he wasn’t that confident in the idea. He hadn’t seen that much of Castle Storage yet but it all seemed rather shady to him so far.

The four of them filed into the elevator and, though Adam expected Dean to press any of the buttons to take them up, he jammed his finger into the button that read B1. “We’re heading down?” he asked from his corner at the back of the elevator.

“Yeah,” Dean replied, looking over his shoulder at Adam. “That’s not a problem, is it?”

“No,” Adam said, meeting Dean’s gaze evenly. “I just didn’t realize there was a basement. And I figured we’d be heading up.”

“Right,” Dean said, nodding. “I guess Dad thought it’d be more secure underground than above, or maybe it was all they had available at the time. We didn’t actually find out about this place until after he died.” The elevator slowed to a halt and, with nothing else to say, Dean pulled open the elevator.

It was a short uneventful journey to John Winchester's lockup; just a series of corridors with locked doors that Adam assumed were other storage rooms. It was a wonder if any of the owners knew about the constant danger they were likely in. He had to doubt it. What could be said? ‘Beware, cursed objects within’? No one would actually believe that and he realized, with ill-humor, that he'd have been one of those people too before the ghouls and the angels and the demons.

Dean stopped at one door in particular and Adam guessed this was their destination, though how he had even known was beyond Adam; there wasn’t a single marking on the door, no number or anything, that would indicate this was where they needed to be. Selecting a large solid-looking key, Dean unlocked the padlock, slid it off and pocketed it. The door took some persuasion before it slid open painfully slowly. The sound of rusting metal screeching against rusting metal had Adam wondering just how long it had been since anyone had been here.

Dean kept his triangle-knife up as he cautiously walked in. Castiel followed Dean significantly less cautiously and he too held one of those knives, though Adam wasn't actually sure how long he had been holding that. He could've sworn that the angel hadn't been holding anything a few short minutes ago. Maybe he had been hiding it somewhere in that trench coat of his. _You could hide a lot of things in it_ , Adam thought from behind Sam.

The younger Winchester had taken up position just outside the door instead of following his brother and his pal in. Adam tried to crane over his shoulder and see what was happening but - dammit - Sam was way too large to allow for that. It was a bit of a consternation for Adam - he had been amongst the tallest in his year but that was nothing next to Sam’s height. It made Adam wonder if he ever played basketball, leisurely or not.

“Alright, seems clear,” Dean shouted from somewhere inside. What sounded like a steel mesh gate slammed open (or maybe closed - it was hard to tell the difference) somewhere inside and Sam moved in. Adam stayed outside, peering in now that the Winchester's considerable size was out of the way. It looked like the entire room was made out of an old shipping container that had been retrofitted with wire fence dividers. There were a few wooden tables, littered with a number of items he couldn't quite make out; a couple of filing cabinets, and more than a few unsealed boxes haphazardly lying on the floor.

Sam stopped and turned around, looking concerned. Adam wasn't exactly knowledgeable on the Winchester’s silent language, but he understood ‘are you coming’ fine enough. He nodded, attempting to smile placatingly without actually smiling but, it came out more as a grimace than anything else. Without trying to elaborate with another facial expression, Adam simply shuffled into the room, boots scuffing the floor as he walked.

Now that he was properly inside the lockup, Adam was able to make out the assortment of items that took up so much space. There was a pump-action shotgun sitting on the table he had spotted from the door. He picked it up and, judging by the markings on the opening of the barrel, it looked like it had been modified to be a sawed-off. Adam frowned; whoever had done it hadn't done it particular well. It looked like it had been sawed-off at a slight angle. He shrugged as he set it back down on the table.

Sitting next to the shotgun, and precariously on the edge, was a trophy for soccer, judging by the small golden statuette of a man poised to kick a soccer ball. He picked it up and read the inscription carved into the tiny plaque.

 _1995 U13 Division Championship Soccer_   
_North Platte United U13 Predators_   
_Sam Winchester_

Adam did a double-take as he finished reading. The trophy was Sam's - what on Earth was it even doing down here? Dean had said that the lockup was for dangerous items and, sure, you could probably kill a person if you swung it hard enough at them, but Adam didn't think that would qualify it as dangerous. He glanced it over before setting it back down very gently, wondering if Sam even knew it was here.

Sam had wandered over by this point and he chuckled as Adam put down the trophy. “It was surprising to us too. We hadn't thought Dad was much of a memento person.” He pointed at the sawed-off shotgun Adam had inspected. “That was Dean's first sawed-off shotgun.”

“That was Dean's work?” Adam asked, looking at the gun. He wouldn't have thought that Dean would've been so bad at making a weapon modification.

“Yeah, he made it when he was twelve,” Sam replied.

“Oh,” Adam said, marveling at just how early their dad had started them on hunting and, at the same time, vaguely appalled. It was any question how making weapons and winning sports competitions fit in with each other. He kept the thought and the question to himself, though. “When did you make yours?”

Sam blinked at the question, face scrunching up into an expression of concentration. “About a year or so after Dean.”

“You wanted to show up Dean and do it even younger, huh?” Adam asked, humorously. He knew that that was unlikely to be the case. He'd seen them bicker and squabble before but he'd never anything like a rivalry.

Sam laughed shortly. “No. I wanted to be just like him though. Dad was so mad when it happened.” He ended the sentence with a bitter twist of his mouth.

“He was mad?” Adam asked, casually looking for an elaboration but all he got was a ‘yeah’ in response. Didn't matter anyway; John Winchester wasn't really an interesting topic to him.

He glanced down the far end while Sam picked up the trophy. Dean and Castiel had clearly remembered what they were here for and were, from what Adam could see, carefully searching through large crates. They were in another caged-in section of the lockup and, judging by the assortment of weapons suspended on one of the walls, it looked to be some kind of armory.

“Should we be helping them look?” Adam asked, glancing at Sam.

“Yeah, we should,” he replied, flicking his head in their direction. “C'mon.”

Adam followed behind Sam as they navigated the boxes and storage chests of the lockup. The vast majority of the boxes contained manila folders and Adam's best guess was that they contained write-ups of past cases that John had taken. Although, why he would have bothered was anyone’s guess. He didn't believe there was some kind of group which oversaw every case but, then again, what would he really know?

His train of thought stopped almost as abruptly as he himself did and he ended on a stumbling half-step. “Oh, no way,” he breathed, staring at the object that had caught his attention.

Sam whipped around immediately. “Adam?”

“Look,” he said, not bothering to actually point at what Sam should be looking at. “I can't believe it…”

It was a baseball. A stupid baseball he thought he'd have never seen again. He approached it slowly and picked it up from its little stand. It was practically how he remembered it (okay, maybe a little dustier) when he had got it all those years ago, during a game that John had taken him to at the Metrodome in Minneapolis. Same grass stain from when it skimmed the outfield, hit the barrier and landed in John's hand. Same signature of Corey Koskie which he had got from the then-Minnesota Twins infielder after gushing about how he wanted to play as well as Corey one day and embarrassing himself. At least John had been supportive afterwards.

Adam scoffed. It was hard to look at those memories and not have them taste bitter. The last time he had even seen the baseball was not too long after his fifteenth birthday, when he had angrily given it back to John and told him not to come back until he wanted to become a proper family.

He hadn't seen him again after that.

He set the ball back down on its stand as Sam finally spoke. “I guess that's yours.”

“It was,” Adam replied, staring at it.

“Second time Dean and I came here, we had spotted that, but neither of us could figure out who it belonged to. That was before we met you.”

“He got it for me at a game,” Adam said, words moving slowly out of his mouth.

“On your fourteenth birthday?”

Adam did a double-take. “How did you know?”

“We, uh- Dad mentioned it in his journal.”

Adam laughed derisively at the idea that John Winchester had kept anything like a diary. “He kept a journal?” he asked, just to check he hadn’t misheard.

“Yeah. He used it to record a lot of his cases,” Sam replied, glancing over his shoulder. Another box had just been searched by the Cas-and-Dean team but it didn't sound like they had found the ring yet. “Came in handy more than a few times.”

“That's great to hear,” Adam said, not meaning it for a second. As he turned to continue on to where the search was happening, he spotted a folded bit of card. Allowing curiosity to get the better of him, he picked it up and folded it open.

Adam had thought that seeing the baseball, here of all places, was a shock but even that hadn't made his heart skip a beat. It was a photo of himself and his mother that managed it.

The photo must've been taken years and years ago. Adam didn't look much over the age of thirteen - he even had that dorky haircut that had lasted a total of three weeks at the beginning of 2004 before he got rid of it - and his mom… looked healthy. She didn’t have the bags under her eyes or even half the stress lines that he remembered. As for where they were, it was definitely the park that the two of them had frequently walked through after school.

“What is it?” Sam asked.

Adam flipped the photo over to show him. “It's me and Mom.”

Sam looked at him with the sorrowful expression that Adam was getting really tired of. “I'm sorry about your mom, Adam. I really am.”

The young man regarded Sam coldly. “I don't care if you're sorry. I don't think I'll ever care if you're sorry. It won't change a goddamn thing.”

“Don't think for one second that I don't know that. I just know what it's like to lose your mom.”

“Oh yeah? Did yours get eaten by ghouls too?”

“No,” Sam replied and Adam rolled his eyes. Of course the answer was no. It couldn't have been anything but that. “A demon got to her,” Sam added with a weight to his words that stopped the eye roll halfway.

He hadn't really expected that answer. He stopped himself short of asking how it happened and instead folded the photo, pocketing it. “Look, I didn't mean-”

Sam shook his head, “It's fine but it’d be great if you could cut me some slack. I really _am_ on your side here, Adam.”

“Yeah,” he replied, with a complete lack of conviction. There was no way he was going to be believing that either of the Winchesters were on his side. Not now, after so many years of being forgotten. “We should go and help those two now.”

“Right,” Sam said and took the lead. A small pile of the metal boxes had formed on the table under the display wall of guns, which Adam guessed were the ones that the two had already checked. Dean and Castiel were already searching through a box each.

Sam announced their presence with a short cough and Dean looked up. “‘bout time,” he said. “I wish we had thought to mark the friggin’ thing.”

Castiel shook his head as he placed the lid back on his crate. “That would have made it too obvious to someone looking for it.”

“They're demons, Cas,” Dean objected, closing his box. “They're not exactly the brightest bulbs in the box.”

“I wouldn’t underestimate demons, Dean. Remember Groton, Massachusetts?” Castiel replied. Adam and Sam sniggered.

“That was different,” Dean said defensively. He moved aside to let Sam grab a box before turning to grab his own. “She was twenty-five and she was damn fine.”

“She was being possessed by a demon,” Sam said, giving Dean a disgusted look while Adam himself was impressed that Dean thought he could even successfully hit on someone at least half his age. “But even still, there was also that time in Tucson.”

“That demon was waiting for me behind a door with a metal bar,” Dean said. “That _definitely_ doesn't count.”

“Oh, come on. You were lured into that room because of that girl,” Sam said, laughing as he opened the box. He let out a disgusted noise which had Dean and Adam glancing over at what Sam had uncovered. Adam screwed up his face in revulsion; it was a withered human hand; the skin leathery and stretched so taut it almost looked skeletal. Each finger was home to a ring of differing size, shape and gem.

“What the hell is that?”  Adam asked, glancing at Dean to catch his reaction but the hand didn’t seem to have fazed him at all. He was probably used to seeing these things like this, which was supporting the fledgling idea that the hand was, in some way, magical. No human hand could be this perfectly preserved in a box that definitely wasn’t airtight.

“Probably some kind of cursed object,” Sam said, closing the box. “Not what we’re looking for though.”

“None of those rings were the one?” Adam asked.

Sam shook his head. “We’re looking for a plain gold ring here. Should be in a box on its own.”

Adam looked at the shelving. There were only half a dozen left; eight if he included the two that Dean and Castiel had just grabbed. If the ring was still here, they'd have to find it soon. He watched Sam move the box with the withered hand to the pile. Adam's stomach knotted in apprehension; they weren't moving fast enough. They were too close now. He needed to know now.

Couldn't just ask them to hurry up, though. He couldn't let Dean or Sam think he was scared or fearful because he was neither. No, the best way to quickly get the answer he needed was to start searching himself. Still six on the shelf. He watched Sam move to grab one; there was no way that he would approve Adam touching any of the boxes, given that he had barely approved letting him come.

So, he waited. Waited until Sam collected a box and moved it to his table. Waited until Adam was sure that he was out-of-sight before casually moving over to the shelves. Each box was roughly the same in proportions and each was equally nondescript. Nothing that would be the right size or shape for a ring box but Adam supposed it was like Castiel said: it'd be too obvious to the demons if they made it different at all.

He shrugged to no one in particular. He just needed to start looking and, so, he grabbed the box closest to him. It was far lighter than he imagined it would be as he shifted it to a tall stool behind him. The latch on the box was not locked at all - something which Adam found unusual but he pushed the mystery from his mind as he flicked the latch open.

He took a deep breath in anticipation and pulled on the lid. Nothing happened. He tried again, yanking on the latch hard, but the lid did not budge at all. It was stuck fast.

“Having trouble?” a voice said from behind him and Adam jumped in his skin. Dean chuckled as the young man turned around slowly. “Don't be so easily startled.”

Adam scowled ferociously, his mouth a thin line. “I'm not.” He watched Sam turn around to see what all the commotion was about and Adam's plan crumbled into pieces.

“So, are you having trouble with that one or not?” Dean asked, pointing at the crate.

“Yeah, damn thing is stuck shut,” Adam relented, forcefully flipping the latch back into place.

“Pass it here,” Dean said, gesturing with his hand, “and lemme have a look.”

Adam picked up the box and handed it over to the eldest Winchester. “Be my guest.”

He fumbled with the box, rotating it around until he got a grip on it that he liked. He looked up and gave Adam a wink, “Watch this.” He immediately pulled on both halves of the box but it was altogether too much force and the box flew open violently.

Adam almost laughed at the look of utter surprise on Dean’s face until he caught sight of a small golden object that glinted in the light as it tumbled out of the box and towards the ground. His eyes widened in horror as he realized what it was - the ring!

He dove forward; dove as well as he could in the cramped confines of the area, aiming for the ring. It hit the ground and bounced, Adam not far behind it, reaching out. It was almost within his grasp before it disappeared. Straight up vanished before him. He had barely a second to realize what had happened before all thought fled and he landed heavily on the concrete floor. He hissed in pain, his chin scraping along the ground, flesh tearing open on the rough surface.

A hand roughly grasped him by the shoulder and hauled him up. _Dean to the rescue again_ ,  Adam thought as he shook off the hand. A drop of blood fell from his face and he reflexively put his hand on his chin, applying pressure. He hissed for the second time in less than a minute.

“You've got good reflexes, kid, but you really need to lift more,” Dean said, turning Adam around until they were facing each other directly. “Let me have a look,” he said and, not even waiting for Adam to respond, he moved Adam's hand out of the way to peer at him.

“Lift your chin up,” he instructed, demonstrating the action himself - as if Adam wouldn't understand simple words.

Adam rolled his eyes and followed his example. “Like this, doctor?” he asked sarcastically. Dean either missed or ignored the sarcasm, peering ever closer at his chin.

After a few agonizing seconds, Dean finally pulled back. “You'll live,” he pronounced and promptly let go of his hand.

“Gee wiz, mister,” Adam replied, cupping his jaw lightly with his now-free hand, “I’d’ve never have guessed.” Dean responded by roughly ruffling his hair and Adam quickly swatted away at his hand. Dean chuckled as he deftly sidestepped Adam's hand. “Hands off.”

“Ain’ that cute. You love that just as much as Sammy does,” Dean said. Sam pinched the bridge of his nose.

Adam opened his mouth to object but it quickly became an expression of shock as the bottom of his stomach plummeted out from underneath him, ejecting itself in horror. “The ring!” Adam exclaimed. “Where's the ring?”

“Worry not, Adam,” a gravelly voice responded and Adam spun around to see the ring in the palm of Castiel's hand. “I’ve got the ring but Dean - you have to be more careful. We can’t afford to lose these rings..”

“How did- The ring-” Adam sputtered as Dean protested that it wasn’t his fault, but the specifics of why were lost to Adam. He let his shoulders slump, the fear draining from him in a torrent. The ring _wasn't_ lost. It was in safe hands. A kind of relief settled on him, though his muscles remained taut and tense. “At least we've got it.”

“I didn't realize you were so concerned,” the angel replied, summoning the ring’s box to him with a flick of his wrist. He placed the ring inside and held out his hand to Sam. “Pass me one of those hex bags, please, Sam.”

Adam scowled. “Of course I'm concerned. We've got the friggin’ apocalypse take two happening.” And that was concerning enough on its own. He didn't need to give voice to any of the other consequences of losing the rings to their enemy. Didn't want to, either.

“We’re not dealing with the apocalypse yet,” Castiel replied, placing the hex bag into the box and sealing it. He pressed his hand against the top of the box. “We’ve got this ring secured now.” There was a flash of white light and Adam flinched away from it, a sudden rising panic possessing him to check his body and all of his limbs. Everything was fine, though, and the feeling gone, without a trace, leaving Adam to wonder where it had even come from.

“There,” Castiel said with finality. “The extra wards have been placed and, as an added precaution, I’ve recarved the originals. No demon or angel should be able to access the ring in the box.”

Adam sighed quietly in relief as Dean clapped his hands together. “Let's wrap up here and check on the next one.”

A few uneventful minutes of re-stacking the shelving later, the four of them piled into the elevator and it began the slow crawl upwards. Adam only half-listened as the other three reignited the conversation on Dean underestimating demons, idly toying with the baseball he had quickly pocketed on his way out of the lockup.

He pulled the photo from his pocket and sighed in exasperation. The damn thing was now curving slightly - as if it weren't damaged enough. He checked his jacket for a more suitable place to store it and found one on the inside of the jacket. Muttering a small thank you to nothing and no one in particular, he moved to put away the photo but stopped, caught by a strong desire to look at it once more.

He flipped it open and found it to be very much the same photo as before. He, his mom, that park. All very much the same here in this snapshot of a distant past but in reality… He wondered what the park looked like now and decided he needed to go there at some point. He hoped time had been kinder on it than anyone else.

The elevator stumbled to a halt and Adam quickly pocketed the photo.

Castiel was the first out, triangle-knife in hand. He looked around the foyer and, satisfied that it was empty of threats, turned back. "We should head for Famine’s ring next. After the lockup, it'd be one of the most obvious places to look."

Adam followed the Winchesters off the elevator, as Dean said, “You think the angel knows we had the rings?”

“Not exactly but we can’t afford to be wrong,” Castiel replied. “Let’s not dwell here too much longer.” And that was the queue for the three of them to move forward and prepare to be teleported out. Adam was the first to grab a handful of trench coat and Dean did the same to his left.

“It doesn’t feel right to go back after all these years,” Sam said, grabbing a hold of one of Castiel’s sleeves. “We haven’t been there since the Trials.”

“I know what you mean Sammy,” Dean replied and his brow creased downwards, his eyes reflecting an internal conflict and a pain barely healed over.

Adam looked at the Winchesters; he had never thought that either of them actually felt anything resembling guilt or regret but here they were, demonstrating exactly that. Who the hell had they screwed over worse than him? “Where exactly are-” he began to ask even as he heard the flutter of wings and they disappeared from Castle Storage without a trace.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Hellatus, everyone! Was anyone else disappointed that neither Adam or Michael was so much as mentioned in an episode where they were closer to the cage than ever before? I know I was.
> 
> I had fun interweaving the Winchester's lives with actual history (as much as I could) in this chapter and I know I'll be trying to do more of it in the future.
> 
> I've also started a sideblog on tumblr for this fic! I'll be using it to post a lot of stuff related to the development of this fic; anything that I'm researching or finding inspirational, as well as little tidbits that may or may not make it into the fic itself. You might even find a few deleted scenes there! Check it out at the-winchestersthree.tumblr.com.


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